


Let's go our separate ways in the night (But know that you're flying home to me)

by ImberReader



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Borrowing most of the terms from SW but it's not ~really~ a SW AU, Cultural Misunderstandings, F/M, Hand Kisses, Pining, Pining of epic proportions, They need space station to haul all this pining, idiots to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:07:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22512979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImberReader/pseuds/ImberReader
Summary: The first time Jaime kisses her hand she thinks it's part of his promise that they will meet again. And while she's not technicallywrong, it takes two more kisses for her to realizes it's so much more than that.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 20
Kudos: 126





	Let's go our separate ways in the night (But know that you're flying home to me)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Roccolinde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roccolinde/gifts).



> "Prompt for Braime (or someone else if the fancy strikes you): Baisemain - A kiss on the hand." - Roccolinde
> 
> A thank you larger than life goes to [Nire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nire/pseuds/nire), who not only put up with my jittery self, but helped me to make this a _lot_ more presentable. Immense thank you to my dear friend V, [Roccolinde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roccolinde/pseuds/Roccolinde) herself, [Aviss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aviss/pseuds/Aviss) and [angel_deux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_deux/pseuds/angel_deux) who all encouraged me to keep going and hyped me up. And last but not least, thank you to my Bean for saying "that's not an absurd idea and you should do it."
> 
> Title from Paloma Faith's [Just Be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHxO5PBNMnU).
> 
> You can find me on [tumblr](https://scoundrels-in-love.tumblr.com/).

**I**

Jaime insists on accompanying her back to her light freighter that is docked in the bay of Lannister command ship. 

They do not speak as they walk side by side. Some of the crew throw them curious glances, but most are absorbed in their work. She grips the lion pommel, tries not to think of how she had tried to give him back the priceless relic. It's made of Valyrian steel no one could replicate even a thousand years later. It belongs by his side or in a museum, but now she can only think of the way his voice dipped when he said _It’s yours. It will always be yours,_ the words reverberating in their footsteps and it’s all she can feel in the familiar smoothness of hilt, like a new gem encrusted in it and Brienne traces over it with tentative appreciation. 

They face each other for goodbyes, one final one they may have a chance to say to each other, and for a brief moment, she wishes she had an eye implant that’d burn his features into its memory card - the curl of his mouth around a comment layered with things she cannot quite decipher, a few graying hairs and the lines worn into his face by age and regret (and loneliness, she thinks). But at least this way, no one can ever take it away from her.

“Good luck, though I doubt the steadfast Maid of Tarth is in need of such trite things.”

“If the Blackfish is as you describe, I am sure it will be his niece’s letter, not favor of luck, that will win him over. But I do hope it will be my side nonetheless. I do not wish to face you on the battlefield, Ser Jaime, as honor would compel me, should my mission fail.” The lion head feels heated in her palm, as if the forge it was made in resents her for the thought of striking down the man who gave it to her. It wouldn’t be a _choice_ , she tells herself. There is never a choice when it comes to Jaime Lannister. 

“I am not much of an opponent anymore, as you very well know from our spars. You have little to worry about, my lady.” 

She doesn’t have the clever tongue to rebuke him without saying _too_ much, without revealing the dread that pulsates in her heart at the thought of seeing him fall in a fight, whether by her own sword or anyone else’s weapon. But the way Jaime mocks himself, even though the fact of their parting itself is exact opposite of all he believes himself to be, is one battlefield she’ll meet him on readily. 

“You underestimate yourself in the most important matters again, Ser Jaime.” She thinks she succeeds in saying it lightly, reminding him that he is, indeed, too haughty in some ways, in attempt to get a rise out of him, but it lands flat, as all her attempts at banter do. 

“And you hold me in too high esteem.” The depreciation in his tone, laced with challenge and dusted with sadness makes Brienne wish she could… She doesn’t know what exactly, but there is a physical ache in her hands, almost as if to hold him. It must be from the way she’s gripping onto Oathkeeper.

“Despite everything, you always manage to exceed my expectations when it matters. I believe that will remain true in the future, too. Goodbye, Ser Jaime.” She must go now, before she finds words for that glowing ache now nestled in her chest as well (if she does, they will burst through her very skin, she fears), so she turns on her heel sharply.

"Brienne."

She stops, his hand so warm around her own, and unexpectedly gentle, but stronger than any tractor beam as Jaime softly tugs her to turn around and face him.

There's no time for this, she wants to say, even without knowing what _this_ is, but even holding to Oathkeeper's hilt doesn't help find her voice, likely lost in the endless forest of his eyes.

"For the next time." He brings her large, calloused hand to his lips and presses a kiss to her knuckles reverently, lingering there and then brushing downward and over her ring finger, as tenderness in his eyes shifts into something Brienne understands even less. The trail burns in her mind as if traced by molten gold. The meaning of it does, too, and she flushes, unsure how to accept or reject such an honor. She has half a mind to argue, but there is pride in her, too.

Before she can decide which way to leave the warm current drowning her, Jaime speaks up again: "We will meet again." It sounds like an oath. No one has sworn one to _her_. She doesn't know how to accept it, there is nothing in all of the volumes of _Vows and Oaths through Millennia_ about anything like this, so she merely nods stiffly, hoping it will not become one of those conflicting oaths he spoke of when they first met. 

"Ser Brienne," Podrick calls for her and the way his voice breaks on her name alarms her. The young man's eyes are wider and rounder than she has ever seen, which is saying something, locked on their hands and she cannot blame him - it is not every day that the best swordsman in perhaps the whole galaxy admits to finding someone superior. She pulls away abruptly, dispelling the image of how easily her huge hands could cradle his face, but the realization of how ridiculous it would look doesn't vanish as easily. 

"Ser Jaime," her voice finally emerges, rough as if it had to fight its way back to her, “until our paths cross again.” Jaime smiles, then, and it is more blinding than sun rays falling right into her eyes back when she used to lay beneath trees back on Tarth on early, lazy afternoons. She must’ve said the right thing, then. 

She feels his gaze on her back, as keenly as she’d feel the laser crosshairs of a rifle, but Brienne trusts him not to press the trigger. More than she did when she stepped in this bay, or maybe not, because her belief in him is already a spire that has reached the dome of the sky. It makes sense in ways she cannot explain.

Jaime is still standing where she left him when she brushes past her flustered squire into the cockpit. As the engine roars to life, Jaime raises a hand in wave and though she knows he cannot see it through the quartz glass, she mirrors the gesture, but then drops her arm awkwardly and begins compiling everything she can find on Weirnet about the Blackfish, as the ship starts to approach the siege line. She will _not_ waste this opportunity he has given her.

When the Tully fleet moves past the Lannister blockade that night, she wonders if he’d smile at her and tell her once more that he’s proud, just as he had done back in King’s Landing when he had given her rank of Knight Commander. Brienne likes to imagine that he would.

And when a week later, Pod asks her if she’s going to accept, her confused scowl sends him backtracking out of the conversation and the room, and Brienne forgets it almost immediately, because they’re approaching Winterfell sector and there are bigger things to think about. 

**II**

Yellow alert lights wash everything in a sickly toned, dim mockery of sunlight and perhaps it is the last one they will ever have. If Winterfell falls, so does the sector, and then the galaxy will inevitably follow, dimming and fading under all consuming strength of the White Walkers.

The thought is grim and all too plausible, so Brienne focuses on the task at hand instead.

There is the sound of rushing beyond the doors, people moving to their positions as battle already rages above them in space. But there is silence in the room, except for the soft rustling of the padded undergarments, clinks of metal sliding against metal as they finish donning their armors.

She finishes first, turns to Jaime to help. His prosthetic hand is state-of-the-art, but sometimes it fumbles still and she wonders if it's because of nerve damage he sustained.

The last concealed straps and seams close under her fingers swiftly and then there is only silence. Brienne means to move back, she _should_ , but he captures her hand, brings it up in the almost non-existent space between their bodies.

"For after," his voice is low and heavy. She swallows thickly as if his words got stuck in her throat somehow. And then his lips press to the back of her gloved hand, but the golden heat of him sinks through, drips into her veins. 

He lifts his head and as his right arm wraps around her waist, Brienne thinks that maybe his mouth will trace hers like his gaze does and —

The alarms turn red, the new tone of it shooting through her and she startles just so, flushing further because Jaime must have felt it in this proximity.

But he doesn't laugh at her, does nothing really, so she steps away first. "For after," she echoes his words. Brienne isn't sure what he meant, perhaps a good luck charm of sorts - that there will be an after. 

Or maybe it has become an oath now.

**III**

The Grand Hall of Winterfell is full with people, but she thinks it feels so much more packed and hollow all at once for the intangible presence of all the men and women who died so the suns would always rise across the galaxy.

She is lucky, she knows, for those most dear to her heart are all here, in her line of sight, raising their cups and laughing, even. But she lost many good people on the battlefield, people who looked up to her and whom she could rely on, to the moment they drew their last breath and then she had to cut them down again and that is the blood that had stained her hands and armor the most.

Most of the blood has been washed away, yet somehow taints the edges of her vision nonetheless, only gradually wiped away by the rise and fall of merriment around her - there is so much laughter from everyone, including Podrick just a little away and even Lady Sansa, by whose side she faithfully stands still.

Her gaze trips over Jaime’s, who is sitting opposite to Podrick, not for the first time tonight, and though there’s been no chains between them for a long time, Brienne feels linked to him all the same, drawn in with tugs far gentler than she used to give him. Yet she does not, will not, move.

“You are free to go to him, Ser Brienne. You know that.”

Lady Sansa’s voice carries a tone of resigned irritation and amusement all at once, as if she is trying to guide a child to some obvious answer, but the child keeps insisting on picking every other option. 

It takes her a moment, but when she looks at her Lady, Brienne realizes she’s the child and one that doesn’t even know what the question is. 

“Lady Sansa, I am where I am supposed to be.” 

“I am quite safe here, thank you, and I am sure you will be able to make your way back to me in no time, if need arose, Ser Brienne. Just go to your squire. And Lannister.”

That she only mentions _one_ Lannister, when there are, in fact, two, sitting side by side, does not go by Brienne unnoticed, but she is unsure how to handle the implications, even in the privacy of her own mind. So, she hesitates.

Lady Sansa doesn’t. 

“I will trust the man more if I know you are the one responsible for what goes in his astromech port. Don’t lose that on my account.” 

Brienne bristles at that, more on Jaime’s behalf than the impossible suggestion that she has some importance in his life. (It just stings distantly, like a limb that has gone to sleep, a reminder of things that she’d like to hold, but cannot.) Though she, frankly, doesn’t appreciate the tone and odd wording it's said in, either. “I am not his keeper and Ser Jaime is capable of earning trust himself, should you give him chance.”

“I will be more inclined to give him that chance if I know his heart is content and _here_.”

She didn’t think it was possible to choke on an inhale, yet that’s what Brienne does. The breath just hitches, knocks against her windpipe wrong somehow, and she focuses on Oathkeeper's hilt in her palm as if its sturdiness could anchor the air and her feelings both.

“My Lady, I… I don’t know why you would think that- that Ser Jaime harbors any such feelings for me, but let me reassure you that we are not involved. He would never see me in such a light.” She feels like a child again, stumbling through her courtesies in front of her angry Septa. No, it reminds her more of when Cersei Lannister had smiled, words filed down into fine dagger points - _But you love him._

At least that had been true. And she hadn’t needed to explain with burning, bitter words how improbable it is for Jaime to think of her as anything but respected comrade, a friend if she is so lucky. Or unfortunate, as most would think, but Brienne knows there are few loyalties so bone-deep as his. Which makes the thought he’d pick her even more of a caricature. Cersei may be a White Dwarf, cold and unlikely to nurse a life in her orbit, but she is a star nonetheless, while Brienne is just…

“Brienne.” Sansa’s hand is warm as she rests it lightly over Brienne’s own and she coaxes it to relax, knowing her stance is being read like a plain and badly bound book.

“Tonight, we celebrate victory in war that could hardly be won. Perhaps it is time to think about what we can _do_ with that hard-earned life. Who we wish to spend it with. And to re-evaluate what we thought to be impossible odds. I assure you, they are not so unlikely.”

It is almost gently said, but wields the same sort of steel that Lady Catelyn had always carried with her. And Brienne doesn’t have the kind of sword that could block its edge.

“Lady Sansa. Ser Brienne.”

Sansa removes her hand and smiles almost graciously at Jaime. There is sharpness to her eyes and Brienne knows him well enough to know this time it genuinely needles him, for some reason. Yet, he doesn’t ask for permission, looks only at her: “I need to speak with Ser Brienne. Privately.” 

With a widening smile, gilded with victorious gleam, Lady Sansa nods. “About time, Ser Jaime. Go on, Ser Brienne. Take all the time you need.”

Since she would rather face whatever Jaime has to say than continue previous conversation with her Lady, Brienne bows to her and then follows the other knight. They don’t go far - he rounds her into one of the quiet rooms, drowning in the light of both moons high in Winterfell sky.

She can still hear revelry from the huge hall and even where some of the crowd has spilled into the corridors, but otherwise silence has settled between them and it feels _heavy_ in ways it hasn’t in years. There has been so much said tonight, she doesn’t entirely trust her own thoughts or tongue if she was to interrupt it. Besides, Jaime had said he wished to speak, yet all he does is pace in front of her with unfamiliar tenseness that sets her heart on edge.

“Will you stop that,” she snaps at him, because _that_ she knows how to do. Jaime does and she immediately wishes she had remained silent, because now he’s looking directly at her and she has to face the tension in his eyes, his mouth. 

The silence stretches, vibrates in the tempo of her uneasy heartbeat. “You said you wished to talk.” 

“I thought you might have something to say to me, Brienne.” He looks as if he is planning to break a siege line alone, no matter what damage he might sustain.

It makes no sense. Nothing does. 

“I don’t.” (She does, but there are no words that would not turn to mud on her tongue and leave her drowning when he laughs her off.)

“Is that your answer?” Jaime sounds choked and the sound goes straight to her stomach, drags it downward as if someone had turned gravity setting up too far on a space station. 

She doesn’t know how to fix something she cannot even see or name, yet she feels it breaking with her whole being. 

“To what?”

There is a pause and then something in Jaime’s demeanor changes, eases up in a way that lets her stomach unclench a little. She will take the first hints of cocksure grin any day, though it has never meant anything _safe_. It makes her think of moonlight’s bridge across Tarth’s waters - gorgeous, alluring, but following it will do you no good. 

So Brienne almost steps back when he comes towards her, but decides to stand her ground. Takes a deep breath which he might feel more than she did, at this proximity. 

“Do you really not know? Or this is just an excuse to have me ask you a third time? I did not think you to be so coy, Brienne.” His hand seeks out hers, startling her, but Brienne can’t look away from his face just in case it finally reveals a clue to this entire bizarre conversation.

“Ask me what?” she tries to clarify, the stupidity of the question far greater than the volume of her voice. 

Jaime brings their joined hands up, presses warm lips to her knuckles, lingering there and then moving to her ring finger as he had back in Riverrun (she has memorized and traced these spots so often in the dark of her bunk she can tell he is a centimeter off at the start), pressing another kiss there. She cannot _see_ the green of his eyes, which she mourns, but at least he cannot discern the blush overtaking her face either. 

Still holding her hand, he leans closer to her and huffs faintest laugh. Part of her retreats in armor which is more familiar to her than the blue set Jaime had given her, preparing for a hailstorm of laughter and mockery. But it sounds so _relieved_ somehow. “You truly don’t know,” Jaime says and more of his tension seems to turn to smoke before her eyes. 

“What do you think this means?” he asks, squeezing her hand before entwining their fingers. Brienne shivers, takes a moment to find her voice.

“That you respect me. It’s a sign of reverence, is it not?” It feels like she is so close to the exit from some wicked maze, but she still has no idea what she will find. Jaime drags her onward nonetheless.

“In a way, that is true. I _do_ respect you, Brienne. More than anyone.” She smiles, before she can help it. It’s one thing to feel it pressed into her skin and another - to hear it. His grin widens in return, before faltering briefly and the hopeful, edged look in his eyes is that of a man who gives her axe to decapitate him with, yet trusts her not to.

“But I was asking you to marry me.”

 _This can’t be real_ is her first thought, and maybe it also floats out along with a soft, shocked gasp. Maybe he is drunk or maybe she’s been drugged and having an intense hallucination or the blow to Jaime’s head was more severe than she had thought. How can a hand kiss even mean that? Though it _would_ explain Podrick’s reaction back at Riverrun siege.

“Brienne,” he brings her disorganized thoughts to halt with low murmur. Lets her hand go and she has only a split-second to miss it, because then he is cupping her jaw and kissing her. It’s a soft, tender press of his lips, but it steals her breath away nonetheless and she clutches a the lapels of his Lannister red jacket. (The gall of him to wear it, in the heart of Winterfell. The gall of him to kiss her so gently it actually makes her feel so frail she might shatter.)

At her touch, he surges upward and what has been soft becomes heated and desperate. His right arm wraps around her waist, pulling her closer and his left hand mimics the way hers has sunk into his hair. Her mouth gives his tongue entrance and in exchange, Brienne loses her sense of time, of anything that’s not Jaime. 

Finally they part and somehow, she is now pressed against the wall she refused back to at the start of their conversation. It’s a good thing, Brienne decides, because her knees feel a little wobbly. And despite all logic, she feels secure instead of trapped. But is it truly so illogical, when there is no one she trusts more than Jaime? Even now, when he is saying things she has a hard time believing, his sincerity undoes her doubts, takes old exchanges into gentle hands and shifts them into new focus that somehow makes sense. (She hasn’t known before, how it is to be looked at with love, but she knows _him_.)

“I would like to hear you say it,” he whispers against her mouth, the vulnerability he reveals in his tone almost like a kiss on its own. 

And for that alone she finds an answer easily, if otherwise she would hesitate, worry even when faced with his genuineness, overthink the mere probability and what it all means for their future. Now that she _is_ given a choice in regards to him, any other option still blurs out and becomes inconsequential.

“Yes. Yes, I will marry you, Jaime.” 

His smile makes twin moons’ light look washed out. “I love you,” Jaime tells her between kisses, peppered on her lips (that they’re so large almost doesn’t feel like a bad thing when he gently bites her bottom one), her cheeks, jawline, before coming back to her mouth. 

“This is rather backwards, don’t you think?” she muses, still reeling from his words and having given up on piecing together a map of the maze that led them here. Later, she will have questions to ask. Now she has Jaime to get lost in. (Openly - no more stolen dreams of brief touches. They - _he_ \- can be hers now.)

“You already said yes.” He pulls back just so, looking at her intently as if she could be having second thoughts. Brienne holds his face in her hands, realizes it might look as ridiculous as she had thought, but the way he leans into her touch renders it meaningless.

“I did. I do. I love you.” 

Then she is kissing him, thankful for the wall behind her and that they were told to take as much time they need, because she doesn’t think she can let him go any time soon.

**IV**

Brienne is sitting in the cockpit, watching the blur of Hyperspeed dissolve into familiar expanse of Stormlands sector before they make the jump to Tarth, when Jaime comes in. He stops next to the pilot’s chair and picks up her hand from where it is resting, presses kiss to it. Brushes his thumb over the golden band on her ring finger and his soft smile fills her chest with such warmth she realizes _this_ is homecoming in its own right. 

“I already said yes in Sept, Jaime, in case you forgot,” she teases, as if her own heart is not still adjusting to the vastness it is now allowed to explore - loving and being with Jaime, the concept of having a family with him. There had been some long and serious conversations in the days after proposal and part of her still did not feel it was real, but in a bright warmth sort of way, instead of dreading when it all would fall apart. 

“As if I could. But I don’t intend on stopping kissing _any_ part of you, just because you’re my wife. Besides, the meaning shifts once an engagement is established.” The way he says it makes her shiver a little, recall all the places he had kissed mere hours ago. It’s _exactly_ what he intended, she knows. 

“That seems unnecessarily complicated.” If there will be a time when Brienne doesn’t make fun of the fact that a lot of fraught emotions could have been avoided if only Jaime had used his _words_ , which he is usually in no shortage of, it is not going to be soon. “Much like the ruling house of Westerlands, I suppose.”

He sits down on the armrest, still holding her hand and grins down at her. “Bold words for someone married to a Lannister.” The way he manages to weave the fact they’re married in almost any sentence is obnoxious. Secretly, she basks in the fact _wife_ must taste as honey-sweet and addicting on his tongue as _husband_ does on hers.

“Who else will tell you like it is?” 

“Plenty of people, but there is no one else I would listen to.” Jaime’s voice is more soft than teasing, it almost overwhelms her again. His love is much like a tide she has watched slowly rising, not believing it even as it already washed around her ankles and kept rising higher. And when it finally swept over her completely, Brienne had discovered that instead of drowning, she could swim in it instead, like her lungs had been made for exploring these depths.

“As if you listen to me,” she tells him. It’s not an accusation, just a reminder that she wishes he would be more accepting of her kinder words, her faith in him. But they have years to gently wear down the self-denigration in each other’s eyes, lull it to sleep and hold the other through the hours and days it screams louder than any storm. 

“Yet Lady Sansa implied the same on the night of the feast,” Brienne muses, recalling how disbelieving she had been, more hurt than encouraged. 

“Did she, now? It was quite unnerving to watch the two of you talking. You hadn’t given an answer yet and I doubted she would say anything in my favor. Perhaps I was wrong.” The unspoken peace agreement between Jaime and Sansa is fragile and there seems to have been at least one conversation that Brienne hadn’t been part of, which is mildly worrying, but she will take it.

“She did tell me that my fears were unfounded and she would trust you more if I was responsible for your astromech port, which is an odd way to speak about my influence on your decision making.”

Jaime’s choked laugh surprises her: “The Stark queen isn’t so straight-laced after all, it seems.” She frowns up at him in confusion.

“Brienne,” he says slowly then, with a widening grin, “she wasn’t talking about decision making.” 

Jaime stands up, gently pulling her with him, eyes squinted just so and darkened to the shade of forest just before nightfall, which she’s slowly growing familiar with. It ignites a slow, but all consuming fire in her belly with a consistency she finds quite dangerous. (Or would, if she wasn’t so happy to burn to the ground and come alive again in his arms.)

“What do you mean?” Brienne asks, almost suspiciously. 

In response, he kisses her slowly, deeply and just before she submerges fully in the feeling, takes a step back. “Come and I will show you.” 

She follows him without another question. Perhaps she _should_ be worried about Jaime’s unbridled, simmering delight with sinful edge, about her father who is expecting their arrival any minute now, but she cannot find it in her. It is their honeymoon, after all. 

Brienne is sure he will understand.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're wondering "Is that a (bad) pegging joke?", the answer is: yes, it is. I would like to blame the entirety of Braime fandom.
> 
> On another note, this is my longest finished and published work yet, as well as 20th posted on AO3! Thank you for to everyone who has read, kudo'd and commented on any of my fics! Wishing you all a prolific February!


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